Tibeto-Burman and Indo-European loans in Burushaski Kinship terminology

Bibliographic Data

ID7684581
AuthorsR J Parkin, Robert Parkin (corresponding author)
Year1987
Volume50
Issue2
Pages325-329
Publication date1987-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0041-977X • E-ISSN: 1474-0699
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0041977x00049053
OpenAlexW2050752907
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited11

Burushaski consists of two dialects spoken respectively in the Hunza and Nagir valleys (the dialect most usually called Burushaski; henceforward Bu.) and the Yasin valley (Wershikwar, henceforward Wk.) in the Northern Areas of Pakistani Kashmir. Although the language is genetically an isolate, it contains a considerable number of loans from the unrelated languages with which it is in contact, chiefly Indo-European (IE) Shina, Khowar and Dumaki, and Tibeto-Burman (TB) Balti. The chief sources for Burushaski have no difficulty in identifying loans from the former, but TB ones have by and large escaped notice or been disregarded. It is only Lorimer who deals with this question at any length, and even he relegates the data to an appendix in his dictionary because, he says (III, pp. vii-viii), of his limited knowledge of Tibetan. Therefore, the bulk of this article will discuss all the identifiable instances of TB loans in Burushaski in one particular area of vocabulary, namely, kin terms, as well as the possibility that the standard TB honorific prefix, a–, often attached to TB kin terms for elder kin, is present at least in Bu., in both loans and native material. Also discussed are a number of more problematic cases, as well as some that can only be understood as instances of common borrowing by both Burushaski and TB from IE. Finally, I list for convenience the undoubted IE loans among Burushaski kin terms, which will demand much less discussion in view of their identification already in Lorimer and Berger. The whole is intended as a preliminary to a further, somewhat longer, article I wish to publish discussing the whole Burushaski kinship terminology from a more semantic and anthropological point of view

Genealogy · Honorific · Kinship · Linguistics · Notice · Political science · Prefix · Sociology · Terminology · Vocabulary · Anthropology · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · History · Law · Philosophy · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism

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